Candace

Talmadge

Read Candace's bio and previous columns

November 12, 2007

World Coming Apart, But By God We’ll Get Rid of Those Baggy Pants!

Politicians throughout the country apparently have nothing better to do than rail against the baggy pants that lead to overexposure for so many of today’s hip youth.

For example, after much public hand-wringing, the Texas municipality to my immediate north, Dallas, launched a billboard campaign against droopy drawers with the slogan, “Elevate your game – Pullem’ Up.”

Would it be picking nits to point out the grammar error in this high-profile plea? The correct way to write this phrase is, “Pull ’em up.” The apostrophe takes the place of the letters “th” in the word “them,” referring to the pants.

Yes, of course it would be picking nits. We have illiterate adults lecturing the young on a moronic, short-lived fashion trend. How appropriate. And how utterly pointless, not to mention misdirected.

Low-rider trousers may be stupid and even offensive to some, but they are the least of our worries right now.

At present, a nuclear-armed state, Pakistan, has declared martial law, prompting its nuclear-armed neighbor and longtime adversary, India, to go on high military alert. This situation is worth our attention and there is much more going on there than we have heard about to date.

Meanwhile, we learn more and more alarming facts about Blackwater, the private army that makes the still-inadequate U.S. troop numbers in Iraq possible. These highly paid mercenaries answer to no law – U.S. or Iraqi – and have killed at least dozens of Iraqi citizens without penalty.

Blackwater troops (operatives? thugs?) showed up in New Orleans after Katrina. Blackwater the company has also moved into espionage services. Is this the U.S. beginning of private armies answerable only to the highest bidder?

A politically well-connected business selling well-armed troops to the highest bidder constitutes a genuine threat to our republic. Those who do not regard Blackwater as a problem should watch the movies, “Blood Diamond” and “The Constant Gardener.” These are fictionalized cinematic versions of the true situation in Africa, where tens of thousands of people die every year and millions are made into refugees due to the bloodstained antics of killers for hire.

Moving right along, we still have a Justice Department that was remade into an arm of the Republican National Committee by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his “Bushies.” Gonzales’s newly confirmed successor, Michael Mukasey, claims not to know a) if the CIA has actually practiced waterboarding and b) if the kind of waterboarding the CIA might have employed does qualify as torture.

Never mind that the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatments (UNCAT), both of which this country ratified and thus made the law of our land, state that waterboarding is torture.

Never mind that this country after World War II prosecuted Japanese soldiers over waterboarding and, in 1983, prosecuted and won a conviction against a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies for using waterboarding against suspects to force confessions.

This situation should concern any American who wants federal prosecutors to act within the law and not make up the rules as they please. Acting within the law might also go a long way toward curbing the numerous politically motivated prosecutions and firings that led to Gonzales’s departure from office in the first place.

Meanwhile, gasoline costs are soaring for no reason other than market speculators’ greed, the price of everything else is climbing as a result, a recession looms and thousands of people conned into dubious mortgages are losing their homes.

Not to worry. Our fearless elected officials are determined to save us from the terrors of unwanted underwear sightings due to slipping pants.

Sigh. We may all breathe easy now. Or we could were it not for our polluted air.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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